The present invention relates to an integrated voice response systems for handling large numbers of telephone lines. The integrated telecommunication system provides a multiple telephone line response and processing system which provides a "soft" platform for the integration of all major aspects of the voice industry including: voice response, speaker dependent and independent voice recognition, text-to-speech and voice identification. In addition, it connects to the telephone T1 digital network such as provided by MCI, AT&T, Sprint, etc. It provides simultaneous voice and data traffic and has the ability to be configured in medium to large applications. The system disclosed herein is able to handle up to 192 lines but it is obvious that it can be configured to handle much larger systems.
The invention is comprised of several layers of processors, each with its own program and communication path. Each interface processor includes one or more T1 connection interface circuits and a control microprocessor and each digital signal processor circuit includes a cross-point switch for line data interfacing purposes and its own digital signal processor for performing signal analysis and data compression. This data is communicated to the main system control microprocessor which buffers it and signals the host system (which may be a conventional PC-AT small systems type computer) that data is present and then transfers that data to the host. Additionally, a control microprocessor in the interface circuit provides the T1 handshaking and call progress monitoring in conjunction with the interface circuit which handles the physical connections to the T1 and all its attendant traffic management.
Objects of the invention include the provision of an improved integrated telecommunications system with the ability to handle all major aspects of voice industry.